Is Obama's Violation of War Powers Act Impeachable?

Though George Will doesn't use the word 'impeach' in his column, he does use the word meretricious to describe Obama's attempt to split hairs with regard to the 1973 War Powers Act, a law that says any President must seek congressional approval within 60 days of engaging American forces in military conflict, which is what's going on in Libya right now. Seemingly inherent in Will's indignation over Obama's violation of the law - the 60 day expiration occurred over a week ago - is the implication that in breaking the law, impeachment considerations should be a consequence.

Will writes, via the Washington Post:

Enacted in 1973 over President Nixon’s veto, the WPR may or may not be wise. It is, however, unquestionably a law, and Barack Obama certainly is violating it. It stipulates that a president must terminate military action 60 days after initiating it (or 90, if the president “certifies” in writing an “unavoidable military necessity” respecting the safety of U.S. forces), unless Congress approves it. Congress has been supine and silent about this war, which began more than 70 days ago.

All presidents have resented the WPR but have taken care to act “consistent with” its 48-hour reporting requirement. So on March 21, two days after the administration took the nation to war in Libya, Obama notified Congress of this obvious fact, stressing that U.S. operations would be “limited in their nature, duration, and scope” in the service of a “limited and well-defined mission.” Months ago, before it metastasized into regime change, the “well-defined” mission was to protect civilians.

In his March 28 address to the nation, Obama said “the United States will play a supporting role.” But the WPR does not leave presidential warmaking utterly unrestrained if it is a “supporting role.”

Perhaps, in addition to continuing the debate about whether Obama is breaking the law, another question needs to be answered in light of how he's treated his ideological allies - Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright - as a result of his actions in Libya. Both were angry with Obama over the decision to go into Libya, as was the leader of the group the Obama Justice Department let off the legal hook in the Voting rights case - Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP).

Why is Obama going to the mat over Libya?

Read it all.

Report: Turkey's Prime Minister has ties to Muslim Brotherhood Leader

The facts surrounding this 'Arab Spring' in the Middle East warrant a look at an extremely important premise. That premise is as follows: The Muslim Brotherhood is working hand-in-glove with the Turkish government and is actively supporting the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Once enough of the governments in these Muslim nations fall, Turkey will move in to restore the Islamic Caliphate that was the Ottoman Empire. Those pieces are falling into place almost daily.

The latest example that supports such a premise comes courtesy of the Syrian ambassador to Turkey, Nidal Kabalan, who is expressing extreme concern over the relationship between a Muslim Brotherhood leader - Gazi Misirli - and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose government is siding with the participants in Syria's uprisings, which have the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, as they did in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Turkey has also been publicly attacking Syria for how it's been dealing with protesters.

Hurriyet Daily News via GMDR:

"I think Turkey has been trying to play a role, maybe which in principle has a good intention, but the Muslim Brotherhood, those who have taken part in armed operations against the Syrian army in 1980s, have Syrian blood on their hands," Kabalan said.

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"The Muslim Brotherhood has been attacking the army. You have to understand that sensitivity." Kabalan said the political wing of Muslim Brotherhood had been engaged in dialogue with the Syrian government, but added that he was talking about the military wing of the group.

Kabalan then expressed concern over Misrili's relationship with Erdogan:

“At the gathering in Istanbul a press conference was held by Riad al-Shaqfa, a mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was carried live on Al Jazeera – an unwelcome development, I have to be honest. We did not like it. You should not give a platform to people with blood on their hands,” he said.

“The issue is who is meeting and what the decisions are. If it was a meeting to initiate a peaceful constructive dialogue with the country, it was not a problem,” Kabalan added.

The meeting was organized under the auspices of the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, or MÜSİAD, but the financer and the real organizer was Gazi Mısırlı, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Syrian who has been living in Turkey with Turkish citizenship, Kabalan said.

“When President al-Assad came to Istanbul [in 2009], Mr. Erdoğan introduced this guy and said, ‘Please, my brother Bashar, help this man.’ Mısırlı is the financer of most of the actions,” the ambassador said. “He was welcomed by Bashar al-Assad personally to go back to Syria. This was 1.5 years ago, and he did not give one single answer.”

GMBDR also links to an Israeli report that even further validates the claims of the Syrian diplomat. In it, Misrili is shown to have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Europe.

Read GMBDR's take.

New York Times Fluff Piece on the Coming Caliphate

Talk about putting a positive spin on something very ominous for western civilization. Anthony Shadid has a piece in the New York Times with the title: 'Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?' When translated into English (from New York Times' liberal tripe), Shadid is really asking if Turkey can restore the Ottoman Empire. The reality is that the 'Arab Spring' the left wing media and Obama administration is fawning over is making that restoration a very real possibility. Once you get past the sappy personal interest story Shadid embeds in his article, there are some telling signs revealed, with NYT spin, of course. Beneath each relevant excerpt is my translation.

Via NYT:

As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.

Translation: as the 'Arab Spring' rages, Turkey is gaining more power and Islamist support.

Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.

Translation: I have no idea.

“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.

“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”

Translation: going back to the way things were is really what's best for the world. We want an Islamic Caliphate / Ottoman Empire like we had before. There were no borders. We were all part of the Islamic order. To get back to that, we're lifting travel restrictions.

THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.

Translation: That Islamic Caliphate we had never should have been dismantled. Doing so has caused such a mess. By the way, the 'holocaust' mentioned there is NOT meant to be interpreted as the Armenian holocaust perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenians; if you ask the Turks, it didn't take place.

No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers… Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine.

Translation: If we actually SAY we want the return of the Ottoman Empire, there will be unnecessary attention paid to such words. We'll just subtly express 'nostalgia' for it.

Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.

“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”

Translation: A return to the Ottoman Empire is in their DNA and they're doing everything possible to restore it without anyone really noticing. They just can't say they yearn for it (see previous translation).

Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred.

Translation: they are pushing for the dissolution of national borders so that all Muslims can belong to one Caliphate again - the Ottoman Empire.

Read it all (if you can).